Here is a State of the Union checklist I received from CREDO. Reject the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has said that action on climate change will be a centerpiece of his second term agenda. But he simply cannot make the necessary progress on climate changes as long as he allows tar sands production to expand. Sign … More The United States
(It is possible to live yet better.) I woke up thinking of the career diagnosis test I took last night, which told me I should be, most obviously, a neuropsychologist, and if not, a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, a sociologist or a political scientist. It did not say I should not be what I am, … More The morning in review
It is possible to live yet better. Still — I am now in a position to say I love my job. This is because I am able, this semester, to teach as I see fit. Perhaps this can last. Someone reminded me of the most devastating of the sentences we had to absorb in Reeducation: … More Au matin
Philology was, however, also understood in very different terms, not as an empirical study of a limited field, but as a speculative undertaking oriented toward deep time and distant things. In “We Philologists,” written in 1874, Nietzsche registered his contempt for most philologists, whose work impressed him as an absurd combination of inconsequentiality and hubris. … More On Philology
I did not know this text. Axé.
…is appreciated. It is possible to live yet better. I love my job because I am barely teaching to any aspect of the language requirement and thus, barely using any textbook-company generated books. I am severely traumatized, I am told, by the language requirement courses here and the politics around them. I know I was … More The endless winter sun
I dressed up today exactly like myself as a freshman (the somewhat Sontag-like Look involves clog boots, jeans, dark sunglasses, a Danish messenger bag and a thick turtleneck). Given that I also wore a jacket I bought with an early TA check the first day of class this semester, I consider that my plan to … More Fashion, nationality…
…to request a resolution about on campus interviews. We need to be able to invite more than one person at a time. Now, we are allowed one, and if we do not like them enough to hire we have to go through a long process to request the visit of a second candidate. That is … More Remind me
And people believe him. Look at this: The violence has dropped by 75% over the past several years, largely due to the changes brought in by Burl Cain, Angola Prison’s Warden. (By the way, “Angola Prison” is incorrect — it is like saying “Berkeley University.”) But seriously, Cain, who has tended to be under investigation … More Additional, self-serving lies of Burl Cain
My subunit does in fact use adjuncts. The people we hire as adjuncts are people we also hire as FTEs. They teach 5 courses for their FTE, and then 1-2 more as adjuncts. Another department’s chair points out that this amounts to discrimination against my discipline: lower division students in it have to have overworked … More On the adjunct situation
